Dr. Holdren describes, "In the same way that past Federal investments in information-technology R&D led to dramatic advances in supercomputing and the creation of the Internet, the initiative we are launching today promises to transform our ability to use Big Data for scientific discovery, environmental and biomedical research, education, and national security."

The new push is dubbed the "The Big Data Research and Development Initiative" and it aims to mine useful information out of complex, rich data sets.

A National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) project to mine imaging, molecular, cellular, electrophysiological, chemical, behavioral, epidemiological, clinical, and other data sets related to health and disease. This project aims to extract "useful information" and create visualizations of the mined data.

"Earthcube", a site sponsored by the NSF and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), aimed at sharing climate change information and other "Earth system science" data sets between researchers in a transparent manner.

A new supercomputing insitute, dubbed the Scalable Data Management, Analysis and Visualization (SDAV) Institute, whose focus will be on scientific data mining. The SDAV will be a joint project between the national labs, led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The NSA mentions it will use (part) of its funding for a contest called "Vigilent Net", which will encourage private sector partners to work together in a cohesive government-aided network against (presumably) foreign threats. The DHS effort is listed as a partnership with Rutgers University, Purdue University, and three other institutions to use data mining to "address issues ranging from manmade or natural disasters to terrorist incidents; law enforcement to border security concerns; and explosives to cyber threats."

For better (research) or worse (domestic surveillance) data mining looks to be a tool increasing used by the federal government and federally-funded reserachers in the years ahead, and the Obama administration's recent spending commitments have reflected that.